The care and feeding of a poetry/dance performance collaboration. A log of the creative process, random writer's rantings, love, work, community, play, trapezes and tightropes, the power of poetry, 99% dark chocolate and the meaning of life.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Sunday morning we were awakened by my 8-year-old nephew chirping "Happy Mother's Day!" and trying out his new jokes for the talent show. Sample (he made this one up himself): "How did the gum cross the road?" "It was stuck to the chicken's foot." What can I say, he's a genius.

It was 7:30 a.m.

"He is a genius, but maybe you could give him a tutorial about the time difference," C said with a pillow over his head.

This morning, the cat walked across my esophagus at 4:00 in the morning, which is cats' favorite times to do things like that. For punishment I banished him from the bedroom where he whined and cried outside my door.

I'm pretty much over the cat thing.

The show finished Saturday night to another very good house, although I was sad that a few of my good friends had health crises at the last moment which kept them away. Maybe we can resurrect it in some form or other at another venue. So much work went into the show, and it was so well-done, it seems a shame to retire it after only four performances.

We're looking into other spaces and if anyone reading this blog knows of a good venue with theatre in the round potential, please let me know.

Saturday night I also read a bit from my memoir piece Drama Queen at the New College faculty reading, right before See How We Almost Fly. It went well. My department chair loaned me his reading glasses and afterwards hugged me and whispered that a close relative of his had MS.

I am not technically the strongest writer on the block, but it seems as if I have some intuitive place that connects with other people's experiences.

C's response to See How We Almost Fly was "I want to collaborate with you." We started talking about writing a musical together--I'd do the book and lyrics and he'd write the music.

"What are your favorite musicals?" he asked.

"Caroline, or Change," by Tony Kushner (actually, more of an opera.) "Hair"--I used to come home every day from seventh grade, where I was dying of depression and social awkwardness, and push aside the furniture in the living room and dance to the Hair record, flinging my head and neck around like a writhing serpent. I also loved "Jesus Christ, Superstar," and "Godspell," and "Tommy," (again, some of these quaify more as rock operas.) I love "Rent."

I asked C the same question and he mentioned "Cabaret," "West Side Story," and "Threepenny Opera."

Yesterday, C skipped his jazz piano class and I skipped a music-jam barbecue and we just lounged around. Went out for a 10,000 calorie brunch at Lois the Pie Queen, then to Amoeba Records where we bought soundtracks for Hair and Rent and Caroline, or Change, then back to his place for a listening orgy. He had set several poems to musical arrangements as an undergrad and we heard those compositions which had the flavor of art songs. I could see this working!

A couple of years ago I really wanted to write a musical and had borrowed a bunch of videos from my musical theatre loving friends. I watched Into the Woods by Sondheim and didn't like it too much. Of course a musical is even harder to get produced than a regular play. I got involved with other writing projects and put the idea on the back burner.

For the past two years I've been quietly incubating the desire to write a play about military recruitment. I suggested that as a topic to C for our musical. Of course this will bring a whole new level of challenge into the relationship: collaboration, compromise, negotiating differing ideas and aesthetic visions.

Meanwhile, to do:

Find keys (clean room)comments on two more classes worth of student poemsanother free-lance article for More (make money)send out poetry manuscript for See How We Almost Fly to at least 10 contests, publishers, etc.liposuction on the second act of Saying Kaddish asap before Jewish Ensemble Theatre submits it to the Ann Arbor play festivalrevise the play I wrote last summer, That Greeny Flowerwrite and illustrate a little storybook for another nephews' seventh birthdayshots for Africataxesmammogrameye exam and new contact lensesget back to my fighting weight and full strength, work up to swimming a mile at a time and quit sugar again